Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

I am.

But if they have not stuck together, what am I?

I am.

If they have not stuck together I am not the reason.

I am Larry.

I am.

After the event he will have his story and she will have hers. The event Lwill amount to little more than a brief, unwelcome scare. They’re the same people before and after the event, the mother and her twelve-year-old son, her "twelve-year-old." They are still there. They won’t go away. But he will have his story and she will have hers. After all, they never were the same. There they are at the end of the day, at seven-thirty, quarter to eight, when she swung open the front door and he was waiting for her and tonight not on the phone but right there in front of her standing in the entrance to their living room. He was sort of smiling, as if he had seen her coming. He was wearing the pale-orange collarless shirt she’d about decided he didn’t like, and his new, expensive sneakers. He had combed his hair wetly, having apparently taken a shower. Waiting for her there between living room and front hall, he made her think of times she had come home from the office thinking, What if he isn’t there? — aged ten, aged eleven. It was his sneakers that made her think of those times. And she knew now, in the instant before he said, "Can we go out to dinner?" that, getting in ahead of his mother, he was going to say what she was about to say. Her keys in one hand, in the other her shopping bag from the fruit-and-vegetable market, she went and kissed him and seemed to walk around him and into the apartment. "Shall we?" she said. She put the two pink grapefruit and the beautiful bluish-green broccoli and the watercress in the refrigerator and the bananas in the wooden salad bowl on the kitchen table. Had she really been about to say, "Let’s go out to dinner"? She remembered the large, unripe avocado in her leather shoulder bag on the chair, and she removed it and put it with the bananas, laid it within the curve. She had not paid for the avocado.

In the small, narrow restaurant are two rows of tables against either wall. At one end, the kitchen; at the other, the street window, maybe fifteen feet from their table. Tonight she was facing the street.

There was the door to the street, to the vestibule, actually, and between the door and the first table, across the aisle from where she and her son sat, was a nook for the cash register. This was an ornate, old-fashioned thing that, if you looked at it, maybe didn’t go with the fresh, elegant plainness of the place. It was a French restaurant, but it was cheap. A black man who she was sure wasn’t French worked in the kitchen and the owner, a tall, gray-haired, gently tense man who looked as if he had been in another profession for years, did much of the cooking. They served mainly crepes and quiches. The tables were set with green-rimmed butter plates and a flower in a cheap glass vase. All around was a composed look of care and economy. Her son usually faced the street window and she faced the rear of the room, which gave her a view of all the tables. Tonight he put his hand on her elbow as they entered, and she went first; so she was sitting with her back to the kitchen and to most of the restaurant.

She would see her son and herself before and after the event. The event itself will be in question, come and gone along the greater event of their life together, which is also in question, and she will know that she could have predicted this — she had the power, the experience; for a long time she let her power be.

They are quite content together. On several other visits here, they never once found this table occupied; it was their regular table. When she and Davey sat down together here at the end of a long day, she didn’t care about anything, not even — but in a good sense — the questions she asked him about his day, his friends Michael and Alex and the others, homework, the cleaning woman, a thank-you letter he was supposed to write. These questions he answered. Actually, tonight he had been talking since they left the apartment about his weekend arrangements. She always wanted him to tell her what he was feeling when she came home at night. It was important.

The waitress, a young Frenchwoman, who wore a white blouse and a black skirt, brought a glass of white wine and a Coke and the menus. The wine, like a lens, held a pale-saffron transparency, and for a minute it stood untouched between the butter plate and the flower in the vase while Davey drank his Coke and, changing the subject, told his mother about a new record. He had only three dollars left from his allowance. She smiled with skeptical indulgence. She liked reading the menu, which never changed.

Davey had it all planned. He laid out the weekend and she listened. She sipped her wine and thought about a cigarette. He would take his suitcase to school in the morning and he and his friend Alex would be picked up in the car by Alex’s mother. Alex’s father came out by train in the early evening. They were going horseback riding and deep-sea fishing, and Alex’s parents had a tennis court and a pool. The pool was empty until next month. The weekend was a fait accompli, Davey’s mother was going to point out to him, for she had not been consulted.

"I see we’re getting something for the money we’re shelling out on your tuition," she said.

"Yeah, Ann, you’ve got the weekend off," he said.

She liked him. He was surprising. "Yeah, Dave, I’m glad for you," she returned.

"For me?"

"For both of us."

"Are you going out?" he asked.

"Haven’t been asked," she said.

"You poor thing," he said.

"But I don’t need to be," she said.

"But you’ve got stuff to do around the house, right?"

"Don’t I ever surprise you?" she said.

The waitress came, and Davey had what he always had, cannelloni with meat sauce — not exactly French. His mother decided to have marinated celery roots first, and then a vegetable crepe. Davey asked the waitress if they had avocado. The waitress smiled and shook her head. He had developed a taste for avocado.

The waitress came back with the julienned celery roots. Ann tasted some; she held it in her mouth like wine, and her stomach seemed to contract. The taste swelled in three or four distinct waves.

Two couples came in together but sat at separate tables. The place was quiet and private. Davey asked his mother if that stuff was any good. She nodded. He broke off a hunk of bread.

She was feeling O.K., she thought. She let the marinade dilute along her tongue before she drank off her wine.

She told Davey he could have asked her before arranging his weekend. Call them, he said. She certainly would, she said; he would need money for the horseback riding. No, he said, the horses belonged to Alex’s aunt, who was in the hospital with arthritis. You don’t go to the hospital for arthritis, she said, and wondered if that was true. Alex’s aunt had to go, said Davey; she was having an operation. One horse was a palomino.

Davey looked at the bread he was nibbling, and kept an eye on the kitchen. His mother offered him the last forkful of the celery roots, but he pulled in his chin, shaking his head. The waitress paused to see if Ann was through and discreetly crossed to the cash register and wrote something down. She came back and took Ann’s plate.

"So Alex’s aunt has galloping arthritis."

"My God, that’s sick," said Davey, shaking his head and sort of smiling.

"You, my dear," said his mother, "mentioned the operation and the palomino in one casual breath."

"It’s what Alex said."

"It’s what you said."

"Well, ‘galloping arthritis’ is what you said."

"That’s true."

"You just don’t want me to go," her son concluded.